


Keep In Touch

by raving_liberal



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Blizzards & Snowstorms, Breaking and Entering, Christmas Eve, Christmas Fluff, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Feels, Kastle Christmas Secret Santa Gift Exchange, Kissing, Post-Season/Series 03, Snow, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 02:17:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17194616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raving_liberal/pseuds/raving_liberal
Summary: An unexpected blizzard and an unexpected guest both arrive on Christmas Eve.





	Keep In Touch

**Author's Note:**

> A Kastle Christmas Secret Santa gift for [idomyballethere](https://idomyballethere.tumblr.com/). <3
> 
> Thank you to david_of_oz for the edit, even though he had this sprung on him!

The law firm of Nelson, Murdock, and Page has had better years, both as individuals and as a group, but all things considered, they’ve also had worse ones. At six o’clock on Christmas Eve, Karen and Foggy prepare to shutter the office for the rest of the calendar year after wrapping up their business with their weekend clients, Matt already sent home in a taxi at Foggy’s insistence, because _Daredevil senses or no, buddy, black ice is serious business!_

“You’d better bundle up,” Karen tells Foggy as she’s wrapping her thick scarf around her neck. “It’s really starting to come down out there.”

Foggy cranes his neck to look out the office window. Their new office is considerably less airy and open than the previous location, and has a higher rent, too, but their one window does at least face the street. Outside, a few last minute shoppers hurry home with bags in their hands, reminding Karen of how grateful she is that she, Matt, and Foggy did their gift exchange earlier in the week. Several inches of accumulation tops the parked cars and lines the sidewalks. 

“I thought we were only supposed to get an inch, inch-and-a-half,” Foggy says, scowling at the falling snow.

“Meteorology is like the divination of the science world,” Karen says, putting on her mittens. “Reading the entrails only tells you so much, I guess.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Foggy agrees. He takes his overcoat from the rack and puts it on, along with a wooly muffler, a knit hat, and a pair of gloves. 

“I’m glad we convinced Matt to go home early,” Karen says.

“I just hope we convinced him to take a night off from his alternative lifestyle,” Foggy says with a sigh.

“We did all we can.” Karen frowns. Doing all she can doesn’t always feel like it makes much of a difference, longitudinally speaking. 

“Still,” Foggy says, shrugging, all _what else can you do?_ They know the answer to that: nothing much. 

“Yeah, still,” Karen agrees. She gives Foggy a strained smile. Accepting Daredevil is one thing; actively rooting for Matt to go out there and put himself at risk is something else entirely.

Karen slings her purse over her shoulder and lets Foggy hold the door for her. They exchange hugs at the bottom of the steps up into the office, then part ways. Karen heads towards the latest in her string of shitty apartments, this one a fifth floor walk up with a bathroom roughly the size of a postage stamp and a kitchen faucet that drips no matter how many times the super sends someone to fix it. She’s even gone at the thing herself with the tool kit she bought herself on Amazon during Cyber Monday; the tools’ handles are all an obnoxious pink floral print, but the markdown was too good to pass up. The faucet still drips. 

The snow falling is the heavy, wet kind. It builds up on her shoulders and slowly melts into her coat, somehow managing to drip from the back of her hat into her collar. Even her quasi-sensible winter boots, complete with thick wool socks, don’t do much to keep out the cold and damp. Karen briefly considers being the ridiculous person who takes a taxi just to go four blocks. Frugality and pride win out, though, and she continues to slog towards home, realizing as she goes that she doesn’t actually _see_ any taxis on the road. 

The snow drifts pile up rapidly around her, muffling the street sounds. When Karen was a child, she loved the eerie quiet that came with a heavy blanket of snow. Now it just puts her on edge, makes her even more aware of dark, silent corners hiding threats. She can barely see where she’s going, let alone who’s lurking in a shadowed doorway or down a narrow alleyway. The snow falls faster and heavier, tripling Karen’s walk time as she trudges through accumulation that is now more than ankle deep and tries not to slip on icy patches underneath. 

Karen finally reaches her building and unlocks the outer door, struggling to wrench it open. She stomps her boots hard on the rug in the narrow lobby, then checks her mailbox—bill, bill, junk mail, bill—before slowly making her way up the stairs, legs stiff and aching from the cold. Exhausted, and with the stack of mail in one mittened hand, she fumbles with her keys, dropping them once before managing to get the door to her apartment open. 

Once inside, she leans against the door in her dark apartment, letting her purse slide off her shoulder and thunk to the floor, joined by her mittens. She kicks off her boots in the dark and wiggles out of her heavy coat, then takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and exhales slowly. Her apartment is warm, at least. She leans against the door, eyes closed, until the feeling returns to her fingers and toes. 

“Hey Karen,” a deep male voice says softly from the darkness. 

Karen’s eyes fly open, and she lunges for her purse, digging through it for the .380. Before she can grab it, though, large hands are reaching for hers, and the same deep voice is saying, “Hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s me,” and then the deep voice says, “oof!” because Karen kicks him square in the chest with her wet, woolen-socked foot. 

“Well, damn,” the familiar voice says. “Guess you’re just fine, then.”

“Frank?” Karen asks, reaching for the switch near the door. She flips on the light, and sure enough, that’s Frank Castle squinting his eyes against the sudden brightness. He looks healthy enough, with no visible injuries, dressed in a pair of dingy jeans and a faded black hoodie with a clearly-defined wet footprint square in the middle of it. 

“I came as soon as I heard,” Frank says from the floor, rubbing at the footprint on his chest. 

“What are you doing in my apartment?” Karen demands. 

“I was checking on you, yeah? I’ve been off the grid for a while, only just heard about what happened with Fisk and everything,” Frank says. He sounds apologetic, like he has somehow personally failed Karen by not watchdogging every second of her life.

“So you broke into my apartment to check on me?” she asks. “How do you even know where I live?”

“I Googled you,” Frank says, looking mildly embarrassed. 

“And you didn’t think to just Google whether or not I was alright, too?”

Frank shrugs. “Couldn’t be sure unless I saw you myself. I needed to see you myself.”

“Then you come by my office, Frank,” Karen says, voice sharp. “You call. You send an email, or hell, a postcard. You don’t just break into my apartment!”

“I didn’t mean to…” Frank trails off as he hangs his head. “Sorry. I just needed to see you myself.”

“So you’ve said,” Karen says.

“Yeah,” Frank agrees. “Look, you’ve got every right to be pissed. I didn’t know about what happened at the paper until yest—”

“You think I’m pissed because you didn’t magically show up and save me from Poindexter?” Karen asks. “Really?”

“I didn’t want anything like that to happen to you, Karen. Not ever.”

Karen scowls at him, throwing her hands up in a gesture that elegantly conveys _what the fuck, Frank?_ “Well, guess what, Frank. Shit like this happens to me _all the time_. It happens to me because I’m a shit-magnet. It happens because I ask too many questions. It happens because I know Ma— I know too many vigilantes.”

“I should’ve made sure you had a way to reach me,” Frank says.

“Daredevil was there,” Karen says, lifting her chin a little at Frank’s look of derision. “He got me out of there alive, you know. You could give him a little credit for once.”

“Red never should’ve let it get that far,” Frank says. “If he really cared about you, he should’ve killed that bastard before he ever got close.”

“Oh, like you did, you mean?” Karen challenges. Frank looks away, face darkening. 

“Like I should’ve, yeah. I would’ve, if I’d’ve known.”

“My day-to-day safety doesn’t rely on Daredevil, Frank, and it sure as hell doesn’t rely on you!”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know that,” Frank says. “I know you can look after yourself.”

“Then why are you here?” Karen asks. 

“Because when I finally got back on the grid yesterday, the first thing I did was look you up, and the first thing I found on you was what happened at the _Bulletin_ ,” Frank says. His voice is rough, strained, and for a brief moment, Karen can picture him searching for her online, finding the attack on the _Bulletin_. She sees him jumping into his truck—of course it’s a truck, maybe a Jeep or SUV, but probably a truck—and driving overnight to get to her. That would explain the exhaustion written plainly on his face in dark circles under his eyes, tension held in the corners of his mouth, and in his furrowed brow.

Karen sighs, most of the fight fading out of her. “You should have called,” she says softly. “You didn’t have to come all this way. I would have told you I was fine.”

“I needed to see you myself,” Frank says again, his eyes searching her face, though Karen can’t begin to guess what he’s looking for. 

“Here I am,” Karen says, holding out her arms. “You’ve seen me. I’m all in one piece, more or less. I’m also _tired_. The walk home from work took forever.”

“It was lookin’ pretty nasty out there,” Frank says. 

“It felt even nastier. Even my socks are wet!”

Frank pats the middle of his chest, where Karen can still see the damp shape of her foot on his sweatshirt. “Yeah, I noticed.”

“So what about you? Do you have somewhere to stay?” Karen asks. 

Frank nods. “Yeah, I’m staying with Curtis for now. Figure I can find something longer-term later, if I need to.”

“Alright. Then maybe we should try this again in the morning, okay?” Karen suggests. “You’ve seen me, and you know I’m fine. Let’s just sleep on that.”

Frank nods again. “Yes, ma’am,” he says quietly. “That’s more than fair. Sorry I scared you like that, yeah?”

“On the scale of one to ‘a typical day in the life of Karen Page’, this hardly ranks as that scary,” Karen says, giving him a tight smile, then glancing meaningfully at the door.

“Your number?” Frank prompts.

“What?”

“You said I should’ve called you. Need your number for that.”

“Oh. Right. Give me your phone,” Karen says. Frank hands it over without argument, and Karen notes that he doesn’t even have a passcode or a thumbprint lock on the stupid thing as she goes into the contacts and adds her new cell number. “There. Don’t call before nine. I’m not a morning person.”

Frank smiles. “Yes, ma’am.”

Karen makes herself step over to the door and hold it open for Frank. He pauses as he gets close to her, and shifts slightly like he’s going to hug her, which she would have been completely there for had he not just _broken into her apartment_. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Frank,” Karen says. When she doesn’t open her arms or otherwise move, Frank just nods and walks out the door, which she closes, latches, and locks behind him.

Karen sighs loudly in her empty apartment, sitting down on her sofa to unwind her scarf and strip off her sodden socks. She’s barely had time to get them off and stretch her wrinkled toes when she hears a soft knock at the door. Reluctantly, she goes to the door and looks through the peephole to see Frank standing there looking chagrined, shoulders and hood dusted with snow. She unlocks the door and opens it crack, just to the end of the chain latch. 

“I said in the morning,” Karen says.

“I, uh, can’t get out of the building,” Frank says sheepishly. “Snow’s piled up against the door.”

“What?” Karen says.

“Blizzard, I guess. Whiteout conditions out there.”

“Hold on,” Karen says. She closes the door and goes to look out her window. Sure enough, the snow and wind are now coming so hard that she can’t even see down to the street below. 

“Goddammit,” she mutters to herself, then marches back to the door, undoes the chain latch, and opens the door. “Come in. God, you don’t even have a real coat on, Frank, and it’s absolutely shitting snow out there.”

“Thanks,” Frank says, as he walks into the apartment, his shoulders hunched forward. He stands there awkwardly until Karen points at the sofa.

“Sit,” she says. “You’re here, so you might as well get comfortable.”

“I’ll be out of your hair as soon as they get the streets cleared,” Frank says.

“Frank,” Karen says with a sigh. “You’re not in my hair. I’m happy to see, you, I really am. I’m just not up for rehashing one of the worst days—Christ, _weeks_ —of my life tonight.”

“We don’t have to rehash anything,” Frank promises. “I can just sit here real quiet, and you can do whatever it is you were planning to do tonight.”

“Sitting here quietly _is_ more or less what I was planning to do tonight, Frank, but thanks for making me feel like I should’ve planned something more exciting,” Karen calls over her shoulder as she walks into her kitchen, a space almost too small for one person, let alone two, and puts on a pot of coffee. Frank doesn’t answer her. When the coffee is ready, she fills two mugs and carries them into the living room to find Frank has fallen asleep, still sitting up, on her sofa. He startles awake when she sets the mugs on the coffee table in front of him, his eyes frantically scanning the room.

“Karen?”

“You dozed off,” Karen says, pushing his coffee towards him.

“Drove overnight to get here,” Frank says. 

“Drove overnight without a plan or even a decent coat,” Karen says as she takes a seat next to him. “That’s not the Frank Castle I remember.”

“I might’ve panicked a little when I saw the news about Fisk and the _Bulletin_ ,” Frank admits. He paws his hand down one side of his face and blinks hard a few times before picking up his coffee and taking a sip of it. “It’s good.”

“Yeah, my Mr. Coffee brews a hell of a cup,” Karen says wryly. 

“I appreciate it.”

“I’ve thought about just trading it in for a Keurig.”

Frank freezes over his mug, eyes widening in apparent horror. “I’m gonna pretend I didn’t just hear you say that, ’cause that right there’s blasphemy.”

“Hmm,” Karen muses. “Wouldn’t do to blaspheme on Jesus’s birthday, I suppose.”

“Speaking of,” Frank says, like he’s prompting her. 

“Speaking of Jesus?” 

Frank does a funny thing with his eyebrows, and Karen suppresses a laugh. “Speaking of Christmas,” he clarifies. “You really don’t have any plans?”

“Well, I have exactly two friends, Frank. Foggy’s spending the day with his family, plus Marci, which I’m sure is fun and all, but pass.” Karen takes a sip of her coffee. “And Matt’s idea of a festive Christmas activity is a two-hour mass.”

“No family?” Frank asks. 

Karen bites down on the instinct to snap at him, and instead sets her jaw and flattens her lips into a thin frown. “None that care to see me for Christmas… or ever, actually.”

Frank nods. “Yeah,” he says. Karen wonders if he has—or had—any family beyond Maria and the kids, or if Maria had family who might have opened their arms to him after the shooting if he’d gone to them. 

“Anyway, it’s not like I’m religious, and we already did our office gift swap,” Karen says, with a dismissive shrug.

“Didn’t want to do a tree or anything?”

“And haul the thing up four flights of stairs? No, thank you.”

They both fall into silence, drinking their coffee. The feeling returns fully to all of Karen’s fingers and toes. The footprint on Frank’s sweater dries. Frank sits so quietly that Karen keeps glancing over at him to make sure he hasn’t fallen asleep again, coffee in hand, but he’s still awake. 

When his mug is finally empty, Frank sets it down. “Three,” he says.

“Hmm?”

“You said you have two friends,” Frank says. “I’m telling you it’s three.”

“You’re not exactly a Christmas plans kind of friend, Frank,” Karen says.

“Yeah, well, maybe I could be,” he says.

“Wouldn’t that require you actually being in town and reachable?” Karen asks. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you haven’t exactly been reliable about keeping in touch.”

Frank’s face darkens a little across his cheeks and nose, though Karen isn’t sure if he’s angry, indignant, or embarrassed, not even after he gives a begrudging, “Alright. Yeah.”

“I wouldn’t _mind_ keeping in touch,” Karen says.

“Me neither.” Frank shifts awkwardly on the sofa, turning his face towards her. 

“Then why haven’t you?” 

“It’s complicated.”

Karen snorts. “Don’t give me that! My life is complicated. Foggy’s life is complicated. Matt came back from the dead this year, that’s how complicated his life is! They still manage to keep in touch.” She shakes her head bitterly. “ _Complicated_ is just an excuse people make to cover up the real reason.”

“Karen,” Frank begins, but doesn’t continue, just turns his head back front-facing, staring at a small dent in the wall, just above her second-hand television. 

“What?” Karen asks. Frank shakes his head, like she’s going to accept that for an answer. Instead, she takes his nearest hand in both of hers. “ _What_ , Frank?”

“It was too hard,” Frank says without looking at her.

“Keeping in touch was too hard?”

“No,” Frank says. “You.”

“Keeping in touch with me was too hard?” Karen sighs. “Well, that sure makes a girl feel special.”

“Come on,” Frank says, brow furrowed. “You know what I mean.”

“I swear to God, Frank, I have no fucking clue what you mean,” Karen says. 

“Being around you was too hard. Seeing you. Talking to you.” Frank absently rubs at the back of one of Karen’s hands with his thumb as he talks. His hands are rough, but warm. 

“I don’t understand. If it’s so hard, why are you here?” Karen asks.

“Because staying away, knowing you could’ve gotten hurt without me here to do anything about it, that’s harder.”

Silence settles over them again, thick as the blanket of snow outside and just as cold and smothering. Frank keeps rubbing his thumb over Karen’s hand, and she keeps holding his hand in hers, and they both breathe a little too loudly in the muted stillness of the apartment. Karen wonders if this is how they’ll spend the rest of the night, until they either fall asleep on the sofa or she decides to get up and put herself to bed. She’s considering getting up either way, getting the bottle of scotch from the kitchen cabinet and pouring herself a stiff one, when Frank speaks.

“I’d only ever been in love once,” he begins, looking down at their hands, hers slender and pale, his tanned and work-roughened. “I was just a kid, and there was never anybody else for me, not before and not after.” 

Karen nods without speaking, sensing he isn’t done yet.

“And I thought— I thought that part of my life was over, yeah? You only get something like that once, and I got mine. I had my shot, and then I lost it, and I was…” He sighs. “I made my peace with it.”

Frank lapses back into silence, so Karen gently prompts him. “But?”

“But then there was you,” Frank says. 

“What did I do?” 

“Nothing,” Frank says, laughing a little to himself. “Everything. Just be you, I guess. Just be how you are.”

Karen smiles a little at that. “And how am I?”

“You’re fierce. Brave. Scary as hell, sometimes, yeah?”

“Scared, is more like it,” Karen says. “It’s not bravery. It’s bravado.”

“Nah,” Frank says, shaking his head hard. “Even when shit scares you, you stick it out. Even when it don’t make any sense to keep on with it, when the smart thing’d be to quit, you stick it out. Like with me. Like every time with me.”

“So why couldn’t you keep in touch with me, then?” Karen asks. “Why does it hurt?”

“Because I can feel—” He cuts himself off abruptly, looking away.

“You can feel what?” Karen asks. “Frank, what is it?”

“I can feel myself falling in love with you, and it scares the shit out of me,” Frank says in a low voice, like it’s something he can’t quite admit at full volume yet.

“Frank,” Karen says softly. 

“I didn’t come here to ask you for anything. I don’t expect anything from you,” he says. “I just needed to see you before I drove myself crazy worrying about you.”

“Is it really so bad?” Karen asks.

“The worryin’? Yeah, it’s pretty bad.”

“No. I mean… falling in love with me. Is it so bad?”

Frank exhales slowly and closes his eyes. “It’s scary as hell, Karen. I don’t bring anything good into anybody’s life, and I don’t get to have anything good, either.”

“Bullshit,” Karen says.

Frank turns his head to look at her incredulously. “’Scuse me?”

“You heard me,” Karen says. “Bullshit. You do bring good things into people’s lives. You brought good things into mine. You _saved_ my life, Frank. How is that not good?” Frank makes a scoffing noise, and Karen narrows her eyes at him. “Frank Castle, you are a good thing in my life. An intense, confusing good thing that breaks into my apartment and is lucky I didn’t shoot him, but a good thing. I wanted you to stay in touch with me. I wanted to hear from you. I wanted to talk to you.”

“Why?” Frank asks, looking honestly baffled, his eyes wide and shiny. “Why would you want that?”

“Because maybe I was starting to fall in love with you a little bit, too, but you left before I really got the chance to see it through,” Karen says. 

“Karen.”

“Frank.”

“Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.”

Karen sighs. “Yeah, Frank, because I’m exactly the kind of person who says that without meaning it. Yes, I mean it. You left before I could see it through, but it was there. It’s still here.”

Frank inhales sharply through his nose, then his free hand is suddenly on Karen’s cheek, turning her to him. He moves in close to her, but instead of kissing her, he rests his forehead against hers. It’s almost their _thing_ now, she thinks, the forehead touching.

“Do you really want to see it through?” Frank asks her.

“Yes,” Karen says. Her breath catches. “Yes, Frank. I do.”

Frank tips her face up until their lips touch softly, hers parting against his. She can taste the coffee on his tongue. The silence that falls around them as they kiss doesn’t feel oppressive or muffling. It feels warm and safe. They kiss for a long time, Frank’s one hand still held tightly in Karen’s, his other hand gentle on her face, until finally, Karen pulls back.

“Wow,” she says breathlessly. 

“Yeah?” Frank asks. Karen smiles as she nods. 

“Yeah,” she says. “I just need a little break. I don’t want to rush this, not if you’re planning on sticking around.”

“Well, I’m kinda snowed in here,” Frank says.

Karen laughs and releases his hand so she can swat at his arm. “You know what I mean! Around the city. Around me.”

“I’d like to, if that’s alright with you.”

“Yeah, Frank, it’s alright with me.”

“Good,” Frank says. “So we’ll take it slow.”

“But not too slow,” Karen says.

“Just the right amount of slow,” Frank agrees. 

Karen sighs contentedly and snuggles up against Frank’s side. After a few seconds, he gets a clue and puts his arm around her, pressing his face to the top of her head in a soft kiss. She closes her eyes and listens to his breathing, feels the warmth rising up from his skin through his hoodie, and she thinks _this, this right here, this is good._


End file.
